Fast Fiction: Emmy
Sir Spencer Braxton learns more than he bargained for when he takes a taxi driven by a young woman to Framley Manor, his home on the downs, as Richard Mallinson reveals.
When Sir Spencer Braxton got off the train after one of his rare visits to London he looked around but Boines (damn the fellow) wasn’t at the station to collect him.
A taxi was waiting. He said to the driver, ‘Framley Manor, please.’
‘That’s up on the downs, aint it? Just a min, I need to tell the office.’
The driver was a young woman. ‘Sit ere in front with me,’ she said and he did and off they went.
‘I tuk someun up there a few weeks ago,’ said the driver after a while.
‘Oh yes, and can you tell me who it was?’
‘It were a man, a young un, quite smart. He said he were a friend of Emmy somebody, she worked up there in the stables or something. Yes, he said he was going to arsk er to marry im and that really made me larf.’
Sir Spencer was quiet. Then he said, ‘Why did it make you laugh?’
‘Well, she said, keeping her eyes on the road, ‘a man once asked me to marry im and then skedaddled after e’d ad wot he wanted -- sex and all that, you know wot I mean, an plenty of it, day an night, can you imagin?’
No, Sir Spencer could not imagine (or not quite). But he did say, ‘The rotter, why did he do that?’
‘Well, I don’t know why,’ said the driver, ‘but he did it, you bet.’
Sir Spencer began to worry. A young man wanting to marry the lovely Emmy? Had he had his way with her and then ‘skedaddled’?
Sir Spencer paid and tipped the driver. Boines came running out.
‘I am very sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘but I lost track of the time.’
‘Well, never mind that for the moment,’ said Sir Spencer almost testily, ‘please send Emmy to me, there is something that I want to ask her, though I suppose it is none of my business.’
‘No, it probably aint none of your bloody business,’ thought Boines.
Having scared off that young man a few weeks ago -- ‘Oil shute yer balls orf if oi ever sees yew ere again’ -- Boines, of course, had his own plans for Emmy.
